The capacity region of general multiple-access channel with certain correlated sources

Abstract

A study of a class of multiple-user channels including general multiple-access channels with many correlated sources and many simultaneous receivers is presented. The main result is summarized as Theorems 4.1 and 5.1 which establish a simple characterization of the capacity region on the basis of the polymatroidal structure of a set of (conditional) mutual informations. The results include, as special cases, the Slepian and Wolf's result (1973) as well as Ulrey's (1975) . These may be regarded as further developments along the line shown by Ahlswede (1971) and Liao (1972) . Furthermore, a finite upper bound for the cardinalities of the ranges of auxiliary variables is given in Theorems 4.2 and 5.2. Finally, the relation between Slepian—Wolf's formalism and ours is clarified.